Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is a collection of proprietary services and high level application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. Its hub known as HMS Core serves as a toolkit for app development on Huawei devices. HMS is typically installed on Huawei devices on top of running HarmonyOS operating system, and on its earlier devices running the Android operating system with EMUI including devices already distributed with Google Mobile Services. Alongside, HMS Core Wear Engine for Android phones with lightweight based LiteOS wearable middleware app framework integration connectivity like notifications, status etc.[1] [2] [3] [4]
HMS consists of seven key services and the HMS Core. The key services are Huawei ID,, AppGallery, Themes, Huawei Video, Browser, and Assistant. Huawei Quick Apps is the alternative to Google Instant Apps.[5] [6]
By January 2020, over 50,000 apps had been integrated with HMS Core.[7] Its rival, Google Mobile Services has 3 million apps on Google's Play Store.[8] The AppGallery claimed 180 billion downloads in 2019.
In March 2020, HMS was used by 650 million monthly active users across 170 countries.[9]
A Chinese phone manufacturer, LeTV, hosted a smartphone business communication meeting in Beijing on September 27, 2021, to demonstrate its phone, the LeTV S1. This was the first smartphone from a third-party manufacturer to include Huawei Mobile Services (HMS).[10]
Huawei Mobile Services on Android goes all the way back to August 2016 as Huawei ID services for phones, basic functionalities for Huawei P9 series.[11]
However, in May 2019 proved to be a significant change to HMS when Google was prohibited from working with Huawei on any new devices.[12] This also included bundling Google's Apps, including Gmail, Maps and YouTube.[13]
Any new Huawei devices launched after 16 May 2019 were unable to receive updates from Google services and would be considered 'uncertified' meaning Huawei's only solution at the time was to turn HMS into a genuine competitor to Google and incentivize app developers to utilize the platform.[14] [15]
Huawei officially launched Huawei Mobile Services in China on December 24, 2019, as a beta.[16] Huawei expanded Huawei Mobile Services in Europe in February 2020 and other markets in Asia, Latin America, Middle East & Africa, Canada, Mexico followed outside banned US market.[17]
HMS is available on the Honor 9X Pro, View 30 Pro, Huawei Mate XS. HMS is also available, alongside GMS, on many other Huawei models launched before the ban.
Huawei promised developers it would take, “less than 10 minutes", to port their app over to HMS - to illustrate the ease of portability between Google's Play Store and the HMS AppGallery.
On January 15, 2020, HMS Core 4.0 (Huawei Mobile Services Core 4.0) was officially launched. Huawei announced that at this time, there were already 1.3 million developers and 55,000 applications on board.[18] The next day, Huawei held a developer day event in London and invested £20 million to encourage developers in the United Kingdom and Ireland to use HMS.
On July 15, 2021, Huawei expanded HMS with HarmonyOS support with HMS Core 6.0 for app development with primarily Android apps, alongside limited HAP imperative developed based apps that shares AOSP file system libraries in all types of devices from smartphones, tablets, smart screens, smartwatches, and car machines. Including various third-party development frameworks, such as React Native, Cordova, etc.[19]
On May 13, 2022, it has been previously reported that proprietary Huawei Mobile Services would fully support an open source version of HarmonyOS by the end of 2022 which never came into fruition, due to its pure open source nature led by an open source consortium of OpenAtom Foundation and Eclipse Foundation, open governance decisions and on-device and localisation privacy focus compared to Android.[20]
On August 4, 2023, it was revealed at HDC that the next iteration of HarmonyOS with HarmonyOS NEXT base system earlier builds came with bundled native HMS Core framework with full vertical integration on native HarmonyOS base APIs.[21] The new system include more focus with privacy and ecosystem with on-device AI, localisation DSoftBus tech as Huawei back-end cloud stack services component embedded within HMS Core on native AppGallery updates and service backend embedded with native third party apps, Petal branded and Huawei app services, alongside hardware ecosystem with extended Android SDK which is replaced with full native developer kit base on latest Galaxy Edition versions of Developer Preview 1 and Developer Beta transition since January 18, 2024 announcement and registered developers rollout of Developer Preview.[22] [23]
HMS Core is a hub for Huawei Mobile Services and serves as a toolkit for app development on Huawei devices. The core comprises Development, Growth and Monetizing[24] and was created as a replacement for Google Mobile Services (GMS) Core.[25] HMS core services were available in more than 55,000 apps in June 2020; HMS Core 5.0 debuted in September 2020.[26]
HMS Core 6.0 was launched in June 2021 with extended support for services.[27] In June 2021, the number of registered developers within the HMS ecosystem was 4 million, and the number of apps integrated with the HMS Core had reached 134,000.
As of July 2022, registered developers within HMS ecosystem had grown to 5 million, and the number of apps integrated with the HMS Core reached 203,000.[28] The number of apps had grown to 220,000 by 30 September 2022.[29]
See main article: Huawei AppGallery. The AppGallery has a key rival, Google's Play Store on Android. The AppGallery is available in 170 countries, across 78 languages.[30]
The reception of HMS is mixed, with the majority of discussion based around the key Google/Android apps which are not yet present on the AppGallery and whether or not this presents a significant problem to users.[31] The open development of HMS Core has been regarded by some as benefiting the Android project as a whole, "If Huawei continues to invest in a holistically open approach... the result could be that we could all end up a bit less beholden to Google".[32]